


Vacation! All I Ever Wanted

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alien Planet, Alien Sex, Beach Episode, Beach Sex, Day At The Beach, F/M, Fluff, Peter is a Vacation Dad, SO MUCH FLUFF, Semi-Public Sex, Shore Leave, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 18:20:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19706884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: The Guardians of the Galaxy have a nice day at the boardwalk.





	Vacation! All I Ever Wanted

“Alright, A-holes,” Peter Quill says cheerfully, twirling his keys around one finger as he descends the _Benatar’s_ gangplank. “Remember where we parked.”

 _Where we parked,_ in this instance, is a hole-in-the-wall docking port behind a Quaid’s. The _Benatar_ had been a hair over the size limit (parking was for shuttles only) but the nice man at the ticket gate had let them take up two spaces without doubling the fee. Quill liked to think it was his natural skill at bargaining, honed and refined over years of life on a Ravager vessel. It might also have had to do with Drax and Gamora spending their vacation armed.

According to the brochure they picked up at the last fuel station, Valen’s archipelagos boast 9,000 kilometers of coastline and a nearly equal number of boardwalk attractions. The Valenese Tourism Board promises an “unforgettable beachside experience for any galactic hitchhiker,” and the brochure features numerous holofoil pictures of something called _chromatic breakers,_ a natural phenomenon unique to Valen and its surrounding moons. It’s on the fashionable end of the star system, under Xandarian law, which means that beyond the native Valenese the cities are thick with tourists, Nova corpsmen, and teenagers looking to find themselves. It’s exactly the sort of place where they could get recognized.

Quill doesn’t care about any of that. He just wants to see an ocean.

“C’mon, you guys!” Quill turns mid-stride and walks backwards in front of them, arms spread wide. “Summertime on Valen! Let’s just take a couple days planetside, blow off some steam, and leave the galaxy guarding in space, yeah?”

Gamora had worn black. A thin line of sweat gathers high on her forehead as she adjusts her leathers. “We can’t let down our guard. The Nova Corps isn’t too pleased with us after that stunt Rocket pulled on Contraxia.”

“Sure, it’s always _my_ fault,” says Rocket. He adjusts his sunglasses with a bitter smirk. “That guy was a real jerk, Gams. How was I supposed to know he was undercover?”

“We’ll be fine!” Quill says, still walking backwards. “We can loosen up a _little_ without the Nova Corps breathing down our necks.”

“I would not allow a corpsman to breathe down your neck,” says Drax firmly. His hands tap restlessly at the knives strapped to his board shorts. “Unless you were injured, and he was attempting to revive you.”

Mantis tilts her broad-rimmed sun hat so it rests higher on her head, allowing her antenna to wave freely in the sea breeze. “I can smell fish,” she says in wonder. “And . . . grease. Salt.”

“That’ll be the fish n’ chip shop,” says Quill, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the Quaid’s.

Mantis wrinkles her nose and sneezes violently in Rocket’s direction. “Watch it!” he snaps, flicking his ear. He trots a little faster, claws crunching on the ground-up seashell parking lot, and puts Groot in between him and Mantis. Groot, now equal to him in height and almost done with what passes for a middle school education on the _Benatar,_ is too busy dragging his roots through the seashells to notice.

Quill rubs his hands briskly together and turns to face the front, adjusting his swim trunks so they rest a little higher on his hips. He leads them out from behind the Quaid’s and up to the main stretch of the Lorelei Island Boardwalk, the only boardwalk in Valen’s northern hemisphere to boast both chromatic breakers _and_ nightly fireworks.

The main thoroughfare is lined with open-air tourist shops, their flooded inventories spilling out onto the wooden, faux-pier walkways. Behind them, several ancient-looking carnival rides rise above the rooftops, resplendent in flickering lights and tinny carnival music. Outdoor vendors have set up tents and clunky folding tables, and a few pace up and down the boardwalk with their wares on their backs, strings of seashells rattling with every step.

The area is thick with tourists of every genus and species, shopping, laughing, or staggering drunk at ten a.m. The Guardians have to elbow their way through the crowd (Mantis apologizing every few meters) before they get to the other side of the thoroughfare, and the low railing overlooking the beach.

Quill lets out a great whoop of excitement and leans halfway over the railing. His outrageously patterned shirt- open over a bare chest, despite Gamora’s extremely half-hearted protestations- flutters out behind him in the sea breeze. “Dude!” he says, then a louder, more emphatic, _“Dude!”_

The beach is a wide expanse of vivid orange sand, churned up into frothy dunes by the passage of hundreds of feet. Farther down the shore, a wide, sandy area full of rocky outcroppings and chunky seashells has been roped off from the public, but up here the beach is full of umbrellas, beach towels, and deck chairs. Children fly kites or play in the sand while the adults sunbathe, or play volleyball down by the water.

The waves roll in high and fast, crashing against the sand in beautiful explosions of pearlescent foam. The water is a blinding, almost chemical blue, like the glow of an M-ship’s fuel cell, and the sun gleams like golden glitter across the surface.

Quill, who was born in a land-locked region on Terra, has seen plenty of the galaxy. Yondu had made sure of that. But somehow oceans have escaped his attention until now. When he thinks of sailors, ships, and pirates, he no longer pictures the _Treasure Islands_ and _Peter Pans_ of his early youth, but instead the wide, cold, silent expanse of the black. The sight of the waves crashing against the shore is exciting, even for someone who grew up off-world.

“Don’t see what’s so _chromatic_ about ‘em,” says Rocket, wiggling between the slats of the railing to get a better view of the waves. “They look pretty blue to me.”

Gamora unfolds the brochure from the pocket of her leather pants and squints at it. Quill grimaces. She must be sweltering in this heat. “Apparently it’s a nighttime phenomenon.”

“Ooh!” says Mantis, perking up. “Can we stay after sunset? I would very much like to see these _chromatic breakers._ ”

“I am Groot!” says Groot, wiggling through the slats behind Rocket and leaping down to the sand below.

“Careful!” Quill shouts hurriedly, but Groot lands okay, and starts loping off at a slow run across the dunes.

“Hey, kid!” Rocket scrambles down the ledge after him. “Wait up!”

“Last one in is an orloni turd!” Quill vaults the railing after them, tucking and rolling very badly on the stand before standing up and giving chase. Behind him, he hears Drax roar, “I am _not_ an orloni turd!” and a loud _boof_ noise as he hits the sand.

Rocket is fast but Quill’s legs are longer, and they hit the surf at the same time. Quill immediately overbalances in the tug of the current, slipping and landing hard on his ass before a wave smothers him. He breaks the surface, gasping, and slicks his hair back off his face.

The water feels _amazing,_ an ice-cold counterpoint to the blazing hot sun. Quill gets to his feet, wobbles for a second, and gets knocked over again by the next wave. His laugh dies in his throat when he feels a shadow pass over him, and he only just has time to duck before Drax flies over his head and cannonballs into the water.

Quill splutters, his mouth full of seawater. “Dude!” he yelps. “The water’s like two feet deep!”

The waves wash Drax back up on the sand and he lets out a big, booming, delighted laugh. “Gamora!” he howls, arms wrapped tightly around himself in mirth. “Gamora is an orloni turd!”

Gamora, who had walked sedately down to the water’s edge, stops before the residual foam can touch the toes of her boots. “I’m fine up here, Drax,” she says, sitting cross-legged on the sand to watch the others at play.

“I am Groot,” says Groot, leaving the water to come and sit next to her. He shakes himself free of the water like a cat.

Rocket, who is currently being tossed back and forth at the whims of the waves, coughs and splutters as he drags himself back to shore. Something about a wet raccoon strikes Quill as incredibly tragic and incredibly funny at the same time. He tries and fails to keep a straight face as Rocket flops, bedraggled, onto the sand next to Gamora. “He’s sayin’ you don’t have to sit on the sand,” he says, eyeing the water with suspicion. “We got towels on the ship.”

“We have _a_ towel on the ship. One towel, that we share. I’m not getting sand all over it.”

Mantis is standing ankle-deep in the water, her sundress gathered around her knees as she kicks her feet in the surf. Her antennae glow with a vibrant light that Quill has long since learned means _happiness_. “I have discovered,” she says, “that there are Valenese fish with lights on the ends of their antenna, like mine! And that they use these lights to kill and eat other fish.”

To the best of Quill’s knowledge, Mantis has never used her antennae to kill and eat other . . . whatever she is. Judging by her look of delight, she’s not opposed to the idea. Quill splashes cool water up her legs and she shrieks, splashing him back.

“Anyone else smell that?” says Rocket, raising his head to sniff the air. His nose twitches in interest. “I can’t stop thinkin’ about fish and chips ever since we passed the Quaid’s.”

Quill looks back up at the boardwalk. His nose isn’t anything like Rocket’s- he can’t smell much beyond the ocean- but he’s already salivating at the thought of the food they could get here. Ice cream, maybe. Janafruit soda. _Saltwater taffy,_ another universal constant of beach towns all across the galaxy.

He jerks his head in the direction of the boardwalk. “Anyone else thinkin’ about gettin’ some grub?”

“Disgusting,” says Drax, but he does get out of the water.

As it turns out, there _is_ ice cream on Valen.

They sprawl out in a loose semi-circle on the sand and bicker while they eat. Rocket, unable to hold the large cones, got his janafruit crunch in a cup, and Quill has a bet going with Drax about how long it’ll take him to get his snout stuck. Quill had gotten soft serve that tasted very like cherry, and everyone else had popsicles in various shades of blue and orange and violet.

“There’s a volleyball court over there,” Gamora says thoughtfully, licking her lips with a now-purple tongue. “We should play. Looks like fun.”

Sure enough, there’s an empty volleyball court further down the beach, though with the way the tourists are spreading, it’s unlikely to be empty for long. In the other direction, the sand eventually gives way to rocky outcroppings and huge, flat stones, an ideal climbing spot for kids. Unfortunately, that part of the beach is beyond the roped-off section. There’s an official-looking sign out front that Quill can’t read at this distance.

“No way am I playing volleyball with you A-holes,” Quill mumbles through his ice cream. “Not after last time.”

Last time had involved a violent disagreement regarding whether rocket boots could be considered OP. Groot- who, having extendable limbs, enjoyed volleyball very much- lets out a cheerful “Ermgrt,” between licks of his popsicle.

“I would like to go shopping, please,” says Mantis. She’s lying on her belly in the sand, feet kicking up behind her, heedless of the way her skirt flies up in the sea breeze. She laps at her popsicle with small, quick little lizard-licks. “I want to see the _boardwalk._ ”

Gamora squeezes Groot’s shoulder with one green hand. “What do you say, Groot? One on one?”

“Ermgrt,” Groot repeats, now regarding the wooden popsicle stick with some suspicion.

“You think there are any arcades out here?” asks Quill. He can dimly recall one summer, a long time ago, when Mom had given him a handful of quarters and told him to go wild. “I wanna see if they got Pacman on Valen.”

“No one knows what Pacman is, Quill.”

 _“I_ know.”

“I am _Groot.”_

“Look, Peter!” cries Mantis, pointing across the sand. “That shop! They are painting the little crabs!”

Quill stretches his arms up over his head, cracks his neck from side to side. “Alright,” he grins, feeling pleasantly exhausted. “Boardwalk time, everybody!”

“I am Groot!” Groot says insistently. He grabs Gamora’s hand with one leafy appendage and starts dragging her across the sand.

“We’ll catch up!” She smiles over her shoulder as she’s pulled down the beach towards the empty volleyball court. “See you later!”

Quill spends too long trying to thing of something suitably clever to shout back to her, but only manages an awkward, “See me later? Yeah you _will_ see me later,” before Drax starts dragging him up to the boardwalk with one beefy arm, Mantis and Rocket in close pursuit.

“I enjoyed that popsicle,” says Drax thoughtfully, as Quill wriggles out of his grip. “I wish that it had not melted so quickly.”

“Yeah that’s ‘cause you ate it _stick first,_ dumbass.”

“They have racing crabs in there!” Mantis gasps, whipping past Quill in a blur of chitin. She ducks into an oddity shop and starts peering into the cages of the Valenese hobo crabs. “They are painted! Their shells are painted!”

“Flashlights!” someone shouts right next to Quill’s ear. He jumps with a curse and steps aside as a Krylorian laden with a towering tangle of flashlights on sticks lumbers slowly past him, stooped almost double under the weight of his wares. “Flashlights for the chromatic waves! Get them here! Get them before nightfall!”

“Flashlights?” says Rocket, with a furry squint that Quill recognizes as a raised eyebrow. “Since when do we need flashlights to look at some waves?”

But they’re two units a piece, and Quill’s committed to the vacation experience, so he picks up six of them in a spectrum of colors. He keeps the red one and hands out the blue, orange, and yellow ones to Drax, Rocket, and Mantis respectively, before tucking the green and purple ones in his shirt pocket for Groot and Gamora and settling in to enjoy the boardwalk experience.

It’s noisy, and crowded, and reeks of sea air and sawdust. The surf shops are spilling over with surfboards, swimsuits, and ugly faux-urban tees. Quill hears snatches of Xandarian pop from inside most of the storefronts, and the occasional distant bass of beachside boom boxes. Mantis, having apparently forgotten the hobo crabs, is now distracted by a jewelry cart. Her globe-like eyes are shimmering with interest. “Peter!” she says. “Come see!”

Rocket’s ears are twitching. “Hey, Quill,” he says. “You hear that?”

Of course Quill can hear it- his ears are already ringing with the rattling of tokens, and the clamor of bleeps and blips from a nearby open air video arcade. He’s itching to get in there and waste all his units but he goes to Mantis first, giving Rocket a _one second_ gesture as he leans over her shoulder. “Yep,” he says, looking at a wide selection of cheap, unexceptional boardwalk trinkets. They look like pewter, or something that looks like pewter, and most of them are marbled with bluish glass. “Pretty cool, Mantis.”

“They change color according to my mood!” says Mantis, pointing at a little sign next to the rings. She’s smiling. “Now everyone will know what I am feeling!”

“Happy?” Quill ventures.

“Yes!”

“Then you buy as many as you want, Mantis,” says Quill, mentally calculating how much she could possibly spend at one mood ring cart. He squeezes her shoulder and gives her a fond peck on the forehead, at the base of one antennae, and goes to find Rocket.

He’s already found the video arcade by the time Quill catches up to him. Drax is nowhere to be found- according to Rocket, he started laughing uproariously at a caricature artist and demanded his own portrait- and Rocket is currently eying a chubby-cheeked Krylorian toddler, holding a fistful of tickets in one sweaty hand.

The arcade manages to be cramped even with one whole wall opening out onto the the boardwalk. Tourists of various species are clustered around cabinets, bouncing around in the flight sims, shuffling rowdy children towards the ticket-eaters. There’s a bored Valenese girl behind the prize counter, chin propped up one hand as she gazes blearily into the token dispenser. The whole room smells of sweat and saltwater taffy.

It’s perfect.

Quill splits a roll of arcade tokens between him and Rocket and spends nearly an hour running from beat-em-up to beat-em-up. Eventually Rocket gets bored of the sidescrollers and spends an eventful ten minutes heckling Quill’s attempt to master Dance Apocalypse 2 before pointing out that he wasn’t hitting all the arrows because he’d forgotten to set the machine to Biped. “You could’ve told me that twelve tokens ago!” Quill groans, dragging his hands down his face in frustration.

After that, it’s exclusively the most competitive fighting games they can find. Rocket bullies some sort of purple creature off the King Calypso’s Combat Tournament cabinet and he and Quill get a few dozen rounds in. Quill mains Captain Tatiana, Rocket mains Deep Freeze, and they keep it evenly matched until Quill ekes out a victory before the final knockout.

“Whatever. Whatever!” Rocket grunts, but he seems cheerful enough, so Quill follows him to the shooting galleries at the back without more than an annoyed flick on the ear.

The shooting galleries at this particular arcade are the usual, old-fashioned kind, with lots of moving obstacles and colorful little holograms popping up as targets. Quill digs up the last of his tokens. “Which one are you thinkin’?”

Rocket’s hand is on his hip, his posture cocked to one side as he surveys the galleries. There are four. “Looks like they got a zombie one. You’re into zombies, right?”

“Holy _shit,_ ” says Quill, incredulous. He sidles past Rocket to get to the gallery on the far right. “Oh, dude, screw the zombies. It’s gotta be this one.”

Rocket catches on immediately and lets out a short, sharp bark of laughter. “Really?” he says. He hops up on a nearby Solar Scramble cabinet and crosses his arms, watching Quill with amusement. “Sure it ain’t gonna conjure up any . . . unpleasant associations?”

Quill pops a token into the machine and picks up the plastic Nova Corps plasma rifle. “C’mon, dude,” he says, “It’s like it was made for me.”

He fires.

The shooting gallery lights up at once, a glittering, self-contained galaxy of blacks and reds and burning orange. Ravager M-ships line up in front of their flagship, emitting manic laughter from staticky speakers. Towards the front, little Nova Corps star blasters bob back and forth- obstacles- while holographic mugshots pop up at different heights, moving side to side at various speeds.

“Oh god, Martinex, no,” says Quill, deadpan, as he hits a crystalline humanoid right between the eyes. The pixels scatter. 900 points.

Rocket roars with laughter and stands up to get a better look. “Geez, Quill!” He shoves his paws into the pockets of his board shorts. “Out for blood?”

“What’s a little murder between friends?” Quill shrugs, grinning all the while. He takes out a few more mugshots, racking up points on the screen above the flagship. There’s a Nova star on one side of the screen, Ravager flames on the other.

It’s fun, and weirdly cathartic, taking out those pirates one by one. The ones he hates, he hates, and the ones he doesn’t won’t mind him having a bit of fun at their expense. Four more targets spawn and Quill swiftly shoots down three of them. “Take the shot!” says Rocket eagerly, gesturing towards the top. “Take the shot!”

Quill makes a gun cocking sound with his mouth and takes aim, then lowers the gun and glares at Rocket. “Hey!”

The mugshot is a small boy, probably ten, with a messy lick of red hair and two black eyes. He’s trying and failing to snarl at the camera, the effect somewhat ruined by a missing front tooth.

“That was my first mugshot,” Quill says fondly. So what if he’s getting a little misty-eyed?

“Yeah?” Rocket grins, hopping down from the cabinet so he can give Quill a little punch on the leg. “What were ya in for?”

“Public intoxication.”

Quill’s mugshot gets hit before he even has a chance to pull the trigger. 50 points. “What the hell-?” Quill says, rounding on whoever’s had the nerve to pick up the Player 2 rifle during his game.

Kraglin Obfonteri lowers the rifle, smirking. “Always hated that kid.”

Quill, shocked into silence, hurriedly looks around to see if anyone’s watching. He grabs Kraglin’s arm and hisses, “There are _Nova_ here.”

“Y’know, he didn’t even _tell_ us baby Terrans start losin’ their teeth after a few annuals,” Kraglin throws an arm around Quill’s neck as he looks down at Rocket. He leans the plastic rifle up over one shoulder, all cavalier-like. “We thought he was goddamn decomposin’.”

“Hey, Krags,” says Rocket. They exchange a fist bump, gloved hand to tiny black paw. “You still running circles ‘round the Nova Corps?”

Kraglin puts a finger to his mouth. “I’m layin’ low.”

“What about showin’ up on Valen is _layin’ low?”_ says Quill with a tight smile. Being around Kraglin brings out the Ravager twang in his voice, as he subconsciously slips back into that familiar pattern of speech.

Kraglin shrugs and slouches against the wall. He wears black these days but Quill can see his reds underneath; he’s still wearing Yondu’s colors after nearly two years. He took the surgery well and the implant along his scalp is grafted to the bone. A few minor upgrades- adjusting it to respond to a whistle from a Xandarian throat, for one- have changed the fin from red to a metallic gold that reminds Quill of the Sovereign.

Quill hasn’t seen much of Kraglin lately, but the knowledge that he’s out there in the black, keeping Yondu’s disreputable legacy alive, is oddly comforting on bad days.

The knowledge that he’s _here,_ making trouble in a boardwalk town, is less comforting.

“Just try not to catch the eye of any corpsmen, alright?” Quill mutters, reluctantly reciprocating the arm around his shoulders. “We’re tryin’a have _fun_ here.”

“I thought you were gettin’ all buddy-buddy with the space cops these days.”

“Yeah, that was before Rocket here,” Quill gives Rocket an irritated swat upside the ears, “decided to out one of their undercover agents on Contraxia.”

“They got agents on Contraxia?” Kraglin says sharply, and Quill has to remind himself bitterly that Kraglin isn’t a Guardian, even if he isn’t 100% a dick either.

“Not anymore,” he says shortly. He hefts his plastic plasma rifle again and turns back to the shooting gallery, only to see GAME OVER flashing in red above the Ravager flagship. “Aw, man!”

The little ticket spitter squeezes out thirty tickets, which Rockets adds to his own pawful. They begin to wind their way back through the arcade cabinets, towards the prize counter. “For real though, what are you doin’ here?” asks Rocket.

Kraglin doesn’t have much in the way of shoulders so his shrug is a full-body exercise. “I have a lot of cheap cargo I’m lookin’ to move fast. Valen’s great for that sort of thing. Saw your ship out behind the Quaid’s and figured I’d find Pete here,” he gives Quill a hard thump on the shoulder, “wastin’ his life on the slots.”

Quill, who’s been trying and failing to feed the long strips of tickets into the ticket-eater without crimping them, mutters something about getting no respect.

Outside, the air smells like lemonade and sunshine. A small crowd has gathered around the entrance of the arcade, watching Drax furiously attempt to out-wrestle the armwrestling machine. Peter Quill, who only had enough tickets to buy one stretchy, sticky hand on a string, is still trying to pick the raccoon fur out of it when he bumps into Gamora leaning against the window of the taffy shop.

“Who’s winning?” she asks, as the crowd goes wild with cheers and catcalls.

“Like Drax could ever be bested by a machine.”

“My sister might beg to differ,” says Gamora, just as Kraglin catches her eye. He and Rocket, temporarily distracted by the armwrestling match, catch up to Quill at a slight jog. “Captain.”

Kraglin gives her a lazy half-salute. “Gamora.”

“Any word?”

“Nah. We chat from time t’ time but mostly we just keep hailing frequencies open. Just in case. Seems she ain’t had any luck catching up to Thanos.”

“Hey!” says Quill, with forced brightness. _Thanos_ is a name he’d rather Gamora didn’t have to hear. Not on their big vacation day. “I think Drax is challenging the armwrestling machine to a rematch!”

“Holy shit, this I gotta see,” says Rocket, already elbowing his way past people’s knees to get back to the front of the crowd. Kraglin, for one, seems just as eager to cheer on the competition, and sure enough, Quill watches them disappear into the crowd outside the arcade with the satisfaction of a job well done.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he puts his back against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with Gamora, and watches a handful of multi-legged rollerbladers fly past in a whirl of color. “You having a good time? How’d volleyball go?”

“He won. Mantis is looking after him right now.”

“He won, or you let him win?”

“A little bit of both?” says Gamora, which makes Quill chuckle. “You?”

“Yeah, it’s been great.”

They watch a few more rollerbladers go by.

“I like this place,” says Gamora. “The color of the sky, the wide open spaces, the view. I’m glad we came here. Even if we can’t afford to stay long.”

“Yeah. I’m glad we came here too.”

“Let’s go down to the beach before the others catch up to us, hmm?”

Quill grins. “I know the perfect spot.”

According to the many, many signs surrounding the area, this particular section of beach has been roped off to allow the Valenese fifing flover to lay their eggs in the sand. Gamora spies a shallow strip of beach running beneath one of the rocky outcroppings- half in the sun and half in the shade, secure from prying eyes- and she and Quill do an awkward little hopping jog across the sand towards it, until they can duck out of sight of the boardwalk.

“I don’t think I stepped on any,” Quill hisses, looking around his feet. The flover nests can’t be called _nests_ exactly- they’re more like divots in the ground.

“Neither did I,” whispers Gamora back. They smile at each other, neither sure why they’re whispering, and flop backwards in unison onto their newfound beach spot. The sand is hot against their backs, but nice. It feels like one of those little pillows Rocket makes Quill reheat for his back pain.

Quill scrolls through his Zune until he finds “Mondo Bongo,” and turns the volume up as high as it will go. He leaves it lying in the sand by his head, Joe Strummer warbling quiet nonsense through the earbuds, barely audible over the sound of the ocean waves. It’s perfect.

Gamora’s arms are behind her head, and her face is tilted towards the sky. White filaments of biomechanical augments run through her skin like a vein of gold, gleaming under the Valenese sunlight.

“Wow,” says Quill. He was always good with words.

Gamora gives him a sidelong look, then looks back at the sky with a low hum.

“You know, not that this isn’t a great look for you, but you’re legitimately gonna get heatstroke or the space flu or something,” Quill gives her a gentle nudge to the shoulder, one that he hopes communicates both respect for her decision and a genuine hope that she’ll reconsider. “Come on, suns out guns out! I wanna see those guns.”

“I thought guns were your thing.”

Quill, already nearly bare-chested, slides out of his ridiculous shirt and flops back onto the sand. “Boom,” he says solemnly, putting both arms behind his head and flexing. “You can see my guns any time you want.”

He hesitates, then continues. “If you really don’t want to do it, I get it, okay? But if you do, then like . . . do it. We’re barely in public anymore, no one else is gonna see you, and there ain’t anything you’ve got that I don’t like, so. If you’re worried I’m gonna make it weird, I’m not.”

It takes a long moment for Gamora to respond. He can tell she’s thinking by the movement of her eyes, the set of her jaw.

Finally, she sits up. She unzips her top and sets it carefully on the sand by their feet. She’s wearing a cut-off tank top underneath, fitted snug against her breasts. It’s black, like the rest of her clothes, and when she wiggles out of her pants and kicks them down towards her top, she’s wearing boyshorts of a similar black material.

Gamora looks down at him, still lying on the sand. “Not weird?”

“Not weird,” he says in earnest.

She lies back down next to him, and for a while, they just lie together. Quill, true to his word, doesn’t make it weird, and is privately delighted to see how much more comfortable Gamora seems, how she enjoys the sun on her skin and the sand in her hair. The soft, repetitive notes of “Mondo Bongo” filter past their ears, and when the song ends and starts over again, neither of them notice. “Mondo Bongo” is just one of those songs.

“With you, on the _Benatar,”_ Gamora says, her voice distant, thoughtful, “it doesn’t bother me. It’s different in public”

“Yeah?”

“How do you stop caring if people see your scars?”

“I guess it comes more easily to some folks,” says Quill. “Look at Drax! He looks like loosely-packed hamburger meat but he never wears a shirt. He just kinda does his own thing, y’know? You could do that too.”

“That’s scarification, it’s not the same thing. And I’m not going shirtless in front of the crew.”

“I was actually thinking more _summertime swimwear_ and less _indecent exposure_ but I mean, I wouldn’t complain.”

“But what about _you,_ ” Gamora asks pointedly. “How do _you_ do it?”

“I’m like Drax. I do my own thing.”

“You are not like Drax. Drax is proud of the stories behind his scars. You make up all the stories behind yours.”

It’s true, and Quill can’t deny it. The scar on has chest alone has had a hundred backstories, from the knife of a jealous Kree to teeth of an ancient diamond leech off Triton, depending on who was listening to the story and if they were paying for drinks afterwards. In reality, Quill’d taken a piece of shrapnel to the chest at fifteen, the first time he crashed an M-ship. Not that Gamora needed to know that. Or Rocket. Or Drax.

Gamora rolls onto her side, humming the soft, repetitive notes of the song, as she props her head up on one hand to look down at him. “You look red,” she says thoughtfully, walking two fingers up the underside of his arm.

“This is more sun than I usually get in our line of work.”

“Do you burn in direct sunlight?”

“I guess,” Quill shrugs vaguely. “Sure. I mean, I ain’t a _vampire._ ”

Gamora smooths the flat of her palm along the length of his arm, up past the crook of his elbow and back down. Quill gives the muscles in that arm a little twitch to amuse her, and she smiles, gives his bicep an approving squeeze.

“What do you think?” he says, playfully stretching for her in the sand.

“You already know what I think. I’ve told you often enough.”

“Yeah, but. I like to hear it.”

Gamora’s hand grows a little more free, a little more exploratory as it smooths across his chest. “I enjoy your body,” she admits, very quietly. “I appreciate how you’re . . .”

She hesitates. Quill lifts his head awkwardly off his arms. “Yeah?”

“I’m getting to it,” Gamora mutters. She runs her palm lightly up the column of Quill’s neck and back down again. “Unlike some people I know, I do not pride myself on silver-tongued seduction.”

“I have never,” says Quill hotly, but she lays one finger against his mouth, and he falls silent.

“I like that you’re big,” she says, “and easy, and pleasant to hold. Will that do?”

Quill’s brow furrows. _“Easy?”_

“Not like that. Well,” Gamora admits, with a little tilt of her head, “yes, like that. But you know what I mean. You’re easy to enjoy. Safe, yet exciting. I can touch you.”

Here her voice falters a little, as does the movement of her hand.

“I can touch you,” she repeats, slowly this time, as she strokes one strong, calloused hand through his hair. “I can touch you, and you don’t . . . mind.”

“No,” Quill smiles. “I don’t mind.”

Gamora shifts a little so she can lie down fully beside him, still stroking his hair. “Mondo Bongo” plays soft in Quill’s earbuds, the mumbled lyrics still too quiet to make out. Quill closes his eyes and tilts his head into her hand.

“I love it when you do that,” Gamora murmurs, almost in wonder. “You don’t care how you look. You only care how you feel. You’re always like that, in everything. I’ll never understand it.”

Her fingernails feel achingly good as they run up and down his scalp. Quill looks at her with half-closed eyes, lips slightly parted. “Can I tell you a secret,” he murmurs. “You have to promise not to tell the others.”

Gamora hums thoughtfully, as though considering the question, but her eyes are sparkling with a knowing humor. Quill holds one arm up, his other positioned so she can lay her head on it, and groans happily when she snuggles closer and lets him hold her.

“I have,” he says, “the biggest crush on you.”

“Oh?” says Gamora. He can hear the smile in her voice.

Quill nods solemnly. “In fact, I think I _like_ like you.”

“We’ve been dating for two years, Peter.”

“Really, it’s been that long?”

“Not long enough.”

“Not the first time a woman’s said that to me.”

She laughs. It’s quick and quiet and over too soon, and Quill’s heart soars because he can remember a time, not so long ago, when she never laughed. Not for anything.

These days, she laughs with everyone. Rocket makes her laugh. Drax too, and Mantis. Groot in particular can make her laugh. But she always comes back to Quill, again and again, and Quill can make her laugh longer and louder than any of them.

Her body feels good in his arms. Lean and wiry, and built with the kind of muscle that comes from hard training and a carefully controlled fitness regime. Quill can admire that, in a way. That kind of power requires an incredible amount of self-discipline, something that Quill has never excelled at. Any muscle he built up over the years came from scrapping in alleys and heaving cargo crates off scuttled merchant vessels.

Gamora’s head is tucked against his neck, but she soon shifts in his arms, breathing deeply. “You smell like summer,” she murmurs.

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I still smell like space.”

Her lips are warm and dry against his cheek, then his temple. He ducks his head down to kiss her neck, nuzzling just under the line of her jaw, and hopes the fifing flovers don’t discover them anytime soon. Gamora’s hands move up his arms to smooth over his neck, then up to cup his head, her fingers rubbing firm, pleasant circles into his scalp as she presses closer to him.

Quill awkwardly shifts enough for them to wrap themselves around each other, both of them uncomfortably aware of the sand and neither of them caring. Gamora makes a low noise in the back of her throat and grinds her pelvis more firmly against Quill’s, until he finally frees up one hand enough to slide it under her waistband and part the cleft between her legs.

She’s hot against his fingertips, almost painfully hot, and _sticky_. Quill has never had sex with a human- barely knows how sex between humans even works- but he has a hard time imagining it could be anything better than this. Gamora pulls him on top of her and he braces one hand unsteadily in the sand, the other already working one finger into her entrance. It’s a tight fit, but silky and pliant, and the rewarding little tremor that tenses up her body is unbearably enticing.

They’re close enough to breathe each other’s air now. His nose bumps her cheek, her lips brush against his. He works another finger into her, a little deeper now, and can’t hold back a little exhale of excitement when she groans and lifts her legs to wrap them around him. Quill crooks his fingers inside her until she bares her teeth, impatient, and when he slips his fingers out they’re accompanied by a long, drooling string of pale green slick. He rubs his thumb in tight, firm circles against her clit as he mouths at her neck, his other hand buried in her hair but not pulling, never pulling. He had learned quickly that she hated having her hair pulled, just like he couldn’t bear the feeling of her teeth pricking his skin.

It had taken a long time to learn what she liked, and what she didn’t like. Even Gamora herself had been unsure. The learning, though- they had both enjoyed that very much.

Gamora’s legs are vice-like around Quill’s hips, squeezing him closer. He feels _caught_. Quill groans softly into her neck, luxuriating in the feeling of being trapped by her, _wanted_ by her. He grinds his pelvis down against hers, feels her shuddering beneath him, her slick dampening the front of his trunks even as her fingertips tug at his waistband. He’s so hard it’s embarrassing, and when she finally gets her hand around his cock and strokes, he wonders if his vision will go white.

Quill lets her guide him into her first before rocking his hips forward, sinking deep into that hot, unbearably sticky center of her, and _god,_ he feels like he’s going to pass out. It feels like she’s _gripping_ him there, all hot and tight and loving, pressing him so close with her legs that he can barely move, or thrust, or do anything but think about how she’s _got him_ and she’s not letting him go till he gives her the pleasure she’s chasing.

Gamora’s breath is warm and damp in his ear. “Oh,” Her hands run up and down his back, cupping his head, following the knobby line of his backbone. _“Oh.”_

Quill’s teeth are gritted tight, his eyes squeezed shut, trying to hold back his groans as he rocks into her in slow, forceful pulses, all that he can manage while held in this kind of vice. He’s used to holding back his sex noises- fucking on an M-ship will do that to you- and it barely registers with him that they’re somewhere secluded, somewhere where he might make all the noise he wanted and not have to worry about Rocket banging on the wall.

Gamora lets out a strangled choking noise and digs her fingernails hard into Quill’s back. His skin, already red and tender from a day out in the sun, burns viciously under her nails. Quill lets out a long, low hiss through his teeth and reaches down between them, the pads of his fingertips rubbing firmly against the soft lining of her labia before moving up to her clit.

He can feel her shaking beneath him, her back arching as though trying to force him deeper, deeper, deeper. It feels almost like the muscles in her abdomen are clenching down on him, holding him captive with firm pulses until the pleasure stops ripping through her body. Quill wraps both arms around her and clings to her like he’s drowning. He knows from experience that she comes for a long time, maybe a minute or more, and that trying to pull away before she can ride it out is _agonizing_.

So he lies there, teeth gritted in ecstasy as she rides it out, her hands clinging to his back, his shoulders, his arms. He feels her flood warm and wet around his cock, dripping down their legs, and that’s the sensation that pulls him, gasping, over the edge of his climax.

She lets out a hoarse, fucked-out groan when he spends himself inside her, and pulls his head down to kiss him firmly on the mouth. Quill can remember the first time they did this, how worried she’d been when she found out his orgasms lasted only a couple seconds. Her concern had not been for her own pleasure, but for his, and when he assured him that it was normal for his species she’d been only partially assuaged. He promised her that it was a really, really good couple of seconds.

They lie beside each other on the sand, sticky and spent. The Zune, still playing that damn song on repeat, is carefully set aside so Quill can snuggle close to Gamora for her to hold him.

They fall asleep like that. They don’t mean to, but they do.

A few feet away, a flover stares at them with one large, cyclopian eye. Several others hop across the sand to join it, and, after determining the pair are not a threat, they depart.

At night, the tourists flock towards the water’s edge.

The carnival rides rising up against the sky behind the boardwalk look resplendent in their multicolored lights, and the bright, dazzling signs above every shop window is enough to blind Quill if he looks at them too long. Glow stick vendors take to the streets, weighted down with huge backpacks festooned with glow necklaces, glow bracelets, glow swords, glow everything. Children are running wild through the crowd, and Quill subtly checks his pockets every few minutes to make sure they remain un-picked.

“Why is everyone approaching the water?” Drax grunts sourly from behind Quill’s shoulder. His pride has not yet recovered from losing all his tokens at the armwrestling machine. He has, however, obtained a caricature of himself, which he's currently holding protectively against his chest.

“I can’t see!” Mantis says loudly, standing on her toes in the sand as she tries to see over the crowd. She’s wearing no less than twelve mood rings, one on each finger, and one on each antennae. “What are they looking at?”

“Rocket, be our eyes,” says Gamora. She laces her fingers to offer him a boost and Rocket climbs up and onto her shoulder, standing up over the crowd, looking at the water.

“Hey hey hey,” he says brightly. “I think it’s those chromatic breakers these Valenese were so excited about.”

“Our eyes are fully functional,” says Drax quietly, confounded. “It would be terrible if Rocket were our eyes.”

“Hey come on, let us through!” Rocket shouts over the crowd. “C’mon, guys. Bring your flashlights.”

Drax, being the beefiest, leads the way through the crowd. Quill falls in after him, holding Groot’s hand so he doesn’t get lost, and the others awkwardly shove their way through the crowd after them. Kraglin takes up the year, eyeing the children with even more suspicion than Quill had.

“There,” Drax says proudly, pushing his way between two Krylorians and making room for Quill and the rest to join him. “That was not so bad.”

Quill digs around in his shirt pocket for his little red flashlight, finds it, and stares at the water.

_Oh._

The waves, which had seemed almost preternaturally beautiful during the day, look _transcendent_ at night. The once-blue waves now shine with a cornucopia of colors. Diamond white and creamsicle orange, lobster red and Zen-Whoberi green. Quill catches fine filaments of violet in there too, and cotton-candy pink, mixed with the burning orange of a struck match and the bright gold of a new transwarp jump engine.

And then the light hits the water.

All along the beach, tourists start shining their souvenir flashlights into the waves, and Quill watches as the light refracts through the water and causes a fine sheet of ice to form on the surface. At least, it looks like ice, but Quill doesn’t have time to tell for sure because when the waves crash back down on the sand, they take the ice with them.

It shatters into a bright, shimmering rainbow dust that quickly dissipates into the air. Quill watches a few kids run down into the water, trying to catch some of the dust, before their parents dart forward and drag them back.

“Holy shit,” says Quill, because he can’t think of anything else. He shines his light onto the water and watches the ice form, then burst into a hail of sparkles. Beside him, behind him, around him, the other Guardians start shining their lights into the water too, laughing when the ice explodes. Drax, overcome with hysterics, has to bend double in order to keep himself breathing.

“Well, I’ll be,” says Kraglin. Quill realizes he’s snuck up behind him without him knowing, and for once, Quill doesn’t mind. “Ain’t that a sight to see.”

Quill passes him his flashlight. He watches Kraglin draw a little face in the water with the beam of light, and laughs when it solidifies only to shatter against the shore. Overhead, a shrieking whistle warns them of an impending firework, and moments later, the sky explodes in blue and orange light. Rockets burst in twos and threes, reflecting down on the water below and making ice form in messy, colorful patches across the water. Mantis, literally glowing with enchantment, applauds after every explosion.

Quill looks over at Kraglin. He can see the fireworks reflected in his eyes, and, respectfully, he looks away. “It was good to see you today, buddy,” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” says Kraglin. He doesn’t elaborate.

Quill feels Gamora’s arm fall across his shoulders, and he puts his arm around her waist, squeezes her close. “I love you guys, you know?” he says, looking up at the night sky. The smoke from the fireworks has obscured the stars, but he knows they’re there. “I love you all so much.”

“Shut up, Quill,” says Rocket.

The final firework goes off like a clap of thunder, and drenches the sky in light.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope you have a wonderful summer!


End file.
